@alexclifford
Research & write on 30s Britain, Spain, Germany. Britain's Iron Chancellor out now! Author of Hindenburg, Ludendorff & Hitler, Fighting for Spain, The People's Army and of the introduction to new release Britain's Iron Chancellor
Again, Farage, Badenoch and their fellow travellers on X are wildly out of touch with the public on Iran.
Even the majority of Reform supporters oppose their position.
Obvs it’s a very bad result for Starmer. If Labour can’t be *the* anti-Reform choice in ultra-safe Gorton, there’s not a seat in the country they can take for granted. Backs up the Caerphilly trend - progressive alternative takes the anti-Reform vote
Change of strategy & leader to come this year
Also a ludicrously shit take because the progressive vote was massively split while the right vote was essentially united. They just lost, badly
This is very very funny. What an absolute loser. The combined progressive vote was over 65% to Reform’s 28%. Bye Matt 👋
Trump: "I read the paragraphs. I read very well. Great comprehension. I read everything there was to read and I said, 'We can't lose this case.'"
Imagine wilfully trading in NATO for this alliance 🤣
See also this piece from 2024 labourlist.org/2024/09/labo...
And another on the political dilemma both Reeves and Snowden share labourlist.org/2025/01/rach...
For my 2020s take on Snowden (the first Labour chancellor), see my introduction to the new edition of his autobiography
Practically every line of this is pure Philip Snowden
The James Murray quote at the end could even be Snowden speaking a century on - albeit less eloquently than the iron chancellor
As I’ve argued elsewhere, Snowdenomics is back (did it ever go away?) and who knows, maybe redeemed in the long run
Rurpurposing this for Andrew’s phone right now
If you’re a deposed head of state on trial, this is the moment you send the text
Genuinely looks like a Vic and Bob sketch, especially the bit in the sauna
See this interview from a couple of weeks ago in which he said the toughest part of his job is being held responsible for the things his *own councillors* say and do
He is well aware I think that Reform has a huge weakness in the form of it's actual politicians!
www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...
One reason Farage is letting so many unpopular Tory failures into Reform is because he is well aware how weak his party (or Ltd company) is in terms of personel
The ranks of Reform's councillors, candidates and staff are full of people like this that Farage knows are a gigantic liability
I don't think it's possible to overemphasise how bad it would be for British politics if this ghoul becomes an MP. From Jew hatred, to a colour-based view of citizenship, to penalising women for not having children, Goodwin is so much further to the right than even Jenrick (who has a Jewish wife)
I think it is very possible Matt Goodwin, if elected might be the most extreme MP ever to sit in the Commons. It is really very important indeed that that does not happen
BBC live reporting “Rayner crucial in stabilising Starmer’s position” from Nicholas Watt. He writes “Everything changed, when at 15:37 today, we saw that three-part tweet from Angela Rayner. The crucial element involved telling her Labour Party colleagues that we should all be supporting Keir Starmer.”
^Exactly the above point made now by Watt
He goes on, with not a little understatement, “Had Angela Rayner decided to say something negative or difficult about Keir Starmer, that would have complicated his position.”
Mind you, she’s probably just delaying the contest until she’s cleared by HMRC
FWIW I don’t think it would or should be enough to save him. I think we are very much where we were with May in spring 2019 and Johnson in spring 2022
But it was intriguing that Miliband and Rayner were among the first to come out in support today. Rayner especially was under no obligation to do so
BBC live reporting saying a journalist has received a text from an anti-Starmer MP saying “if we could bottle this Keir and show it to the country we’ll walk the next election”
Has a new soft left Starmer just dropped?
All the insider reporting I’ve read on him suggests that since 2020 he has outsourced his politics to McSweeney & co. But the Blue Labour stuff has never added up with his previous career
Morgan-free, Starmer’s last card may well be a sharp leftward tack
if Labour strategists worked for Reform they'd be telling Farage to back Rejoin
I’m not saying I approve or endorse of Johnson or what he did - especially the purge of the Tory Party - but it is undeniable that ditching a lame duck PM completely reversed the Conservative party’s fortunes & provided the decisiveness to resolve seemingly insoluble policy and political problems
100%
You see some criticism of changing leader - it won’t change anything, there’ll still be the same problems
But when Johnson took over in 2019 he took the Tories from 5th place to a landslide win, broke the Brexit impasse and whipped an ill-disciplined party into line, all in a matter of months
I have never heard of Carns until this post but what a CV… most recent recipient of the DSO (one below the Victora Cross), won the Military Cross in Afghanistan AND climbed Everest *last year* whilst Veterans Minister
If nothing else, where was the Labour comms celebrating this guy???
Just caught up on The Night Manager 😬😬😬
Out of geniune interest, what fascist states were not totalitarian?
I’m militant about this. We used to be a country
Was at a bar recently, huge queue was snaking around the room. I walked straight up to the bar and got served instantly. I hadn’t clocked all the standing people were in fact queuing, while bar staff stood waiting
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
1000%
12-Mile exclusion zone for British vessels? Are the Express aware of the concept of international trade? Unhinged stuff. So much for global Britain
"Britain was better in the 50s"
"When most people cycled to work, and people walked to town?"
"Not like that".
